


the night is here (the day is gone)

by mischief7manager



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Nothing but angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 22:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8418685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mischief7manager/pseuds/mischief7manager
Summary: "Vex flings open the doors to the Raven Queen’s shrine. She’s only been here once, the first time Percy showed it to her, and even then in its unfinished state, she could sense the wrongness of her presence. This was a space not meant for her, every moment she stayed a further intrusion. This was for Vax, the first time in their lives he’d had something she wasn’t party to. The first time he went somewhere she couldn’t follow."Vex seeks an audience with the Raven Queen. She doesn't get what she's looking for.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The seeds of this fic were planted with Vax's brush with death in episode 71, and germinated over about half an hour and two thirds of a bottle of Moscato. Write drunk, post drunk, cry about your sibling feels.
> 
> Title from "World Spins Madly On" by the Weepies.
> 
> I'm really really sorry.

They step through the Sun Tree, and Vex is already moving.

She can hear the others calling after her, Keyleth’s voice breaking around her name, Grog yelling not to do anything stupid, but she learned enough from her brother to slip out of their sight with barely more than a thought. She doesn’t know where her feet are taking her, other than away, away from the group, from what’s left of them, she just walks, and then runs, her heart pounding cruelly in her chest, every aching beat a reminder, until she realizes where it is she’s going.

Vex flings open the doors to the Raven Queen’s shrine. She’s only been here once, the first time Percy showed it to her, and even then in its unfinished state, she could sense the wrongness of her presence. This was a space not meant for her, every moment she stayed a further intrusion. This was for Vax, the first time in their lives he’d had something she wasn’t party to. The first time he went somewhere she couldn’t follow.

“It was supposed to be me, wasn’t it?”

Her voice creaks on the accusation, the first sound she’s uttered since her screams and sobs ran silent. She flings the words at the idol in the center of the shrine, as though she can crack the image’s porcelain mask through the force of her rage and grief.

“That first time, in the tomb where we found the Vestige, it was me you wanted, wasn’t it? It was meant to be my life.” Her hands clench at her sides, nails digging into the meat of her palms. “Only we fucked it up. He had to go and be an idiot, and you took him in my place.”

She’s shaking now, or maybe she never stopped. Maybe her body is falling apart around her, and she’s only now noticing it happen. “He is your servant,” she says, and she steps up to the altar. There are candles, incense, all the trappings of well-used place of worship, and if she closes her eyes she can see him here, lighting a taper, eyes falling shut in solemn prayer. “He is _yours_ , you _claimed him_ , you- you _enlisted_ him as your personal soldier. He swore himself to you, he gave up _everything_ -”

She chokes on something, the words or the thoughts or the bile rising in her throat, and she heaves a gasping breath, one hand clapping over her mouth. She stays like that for endless seconds, frozen in a parody of reverence, until she can bring herself to speak.

“I want him back.”

Her voice echoes in the stone chamber, words bouncing back to meet her in mocking repetition, coursing through her as hot as the blood in her veins.

“Do you hear me?” Vex steps forward until she is directly in front of the Raven Queen’s idol, face to face with the motionless figure. “You made an exchange once, his life for mine, you can do it again, and I want him _back_.”

With that, the hardness she had gathered around herself bursts, and Vex falls to her knees in front of the idol. “Give him _back_ ,” she sobs, hot tears coursing down her cheeks, “give him _back_ , he’s my _brother_ , I can’t- Please, I’ll do- I’ll do anything, take me in his place, make me your servant, _take my life for his, I don’t care_ , please, please-”

She begs as she never has before, not for food, not for wealth, not even for her own life when she was in danger of losing it. Vex pleads at the altar for the Raven Queen until her words run dry and silence falls in the crypt. Her breath catches, and for a second, just a second, she feels a cool breeze lift her hair and ghost over the back of her neck, and her heart leaps in her chest.

But the breeze fades, and the silence continues, and she realizes that even if her brother’s patron has heard, she will not answer.

Vex screams.

It’s an animal cry, one that claws from her chest and rips her open, and without her knowing what she’s doing, her arm sweeps across the flat plane of the altar. Candles clatter to stone floor, the statue of the goddess falls and cracks, she hears it break, but she can’t stop, she can only watch as her hands rend the silk cloths from their hangings, overturn the very altar table, tear and shatter until there is nothing left in this place that is whole, and even that is not enough, and she can’t stop, she can’t stop, she can’t-

And then there are arms around her, drawing her into a familiar embrace. “Vex,” Percy says, “Vex, you’ll hurt yourself, stop, please, Vex, just-”

She thrashes in his arms, and some part of her is aware that it’s _Percy_ , she has no reason to struggle, but she can’t help it, she needs to keep moving, she needs to break something, she needs-

“I know, darling, I know,” Percy says, and she realizes she’s speaking out loud, and he _understands_ , and that, for whatever reason, is what causes the storm to break. She stops fighting him, stops fighting entirely, slumps against his shoulder and shakes against his chest, and he tucks her head under his chin and holds her as she shudders.

“I can’t do this,” she gasps against his collarbone. She never prepared for this, she never even thought of it. If it had been one of the others, she knows in some horrible part of herself she refuses to acknowledge, she’d be alright. She’d mourn, of course, she’d lose one of her family, and that would break her in ways she refuses to speculate on, but losing one of them, hells, even losing _Percy_ , whatever they are to each other now, would be survivable.

Losing Vax isn’t losing a member of her family. Losing Vax is losing her own being. It’s losing a limb, a self, it’s half her heart being ripped from her chest, leaving this broken, misshapen thing still sputtering and spasming inside her, and she can say from personal experience that dying would be easier than this hollowing-out of her mind and her soul. She can feel the places where he should be, like the dull ache of a missing tooth, and she’s never been alone before, not like this, and she can’t be alone, she can’t, she can’t-

“I’m here,” Percy says, cradling her against him, and she feels, dimly, the warm wetness of tears seeping into the crown of her hair where he’s pressed her against him. “I’m here, darling, I know that’s not enough, but I’m here, I promise you-”

“How do you do this?” Vex pulls back to look at him, searching his tear stained face. “How- how do you live with this, Percy, I can’t- How do you go on?”

Because he did go on, she knows. Whatever agony she suffers now, he suffered seven times over, and here he is, still breathing, still living, while every part of Vex is crying out to just lay down here, to join her brother again, to end this half-lived torment.

Percy stares at her, mouth working soundlessly. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “I- I don’t have an answer. Not one that will help, I don’t think, I- I lost myself in that time, I wasn’t- I wasn’t living, really, until I found you, all of you. I can’t- I don’t know how to fix this, Vex.” His voice breaks, and his hand comes up to brush the hair back from her face. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

Vex draws a shuddering breath. “It should have been me.” Percy opens his mouth to protest, but Vex shakes her head. “In the tomb, with Vorugal, and- and now, here, it should have been me, it was _supposed_ to be me, Percy-” Her hands fist in his coat, white knuckled, and she’s still shaking, and the tears on her cheeks have yet to dry before fresh ones take their place. “I was supposed to die, Percy, I want- It hurts so much, I want to die, I’ll see him again, I’ll see my mother again, Percy, let me die, let me die, Percy, _please_ -”

Percy cries out as though she’s struck him, and before she can even realize what she’s said, he’s pulled her to him again, his grip bruising around her shoulders. “Vex,” he says, voice as broken as she thinks her own must be, “Vex, Vex.”

He says her name over and over, presses it against the top of her head, breathes it across her cheek, murmurs it deep within his chest. He’s rocking her, she notices, instinct driving him to soothe her like a child, and the motion undoes something inside her, and she weeps, great heaving sobs, against his shirt.

They stay there for what feels like hours, two bodies in a mockery of a lovers’ embrace. But all tears run dry eventually, and at long last Vex’s agony subsides into the numbness that follows such moments.

Feeling her settle and still, Percy pulls away, just enough to catch her eye. “We should get back to the others,” he says, voice hoarse from his own grief. “There are… There are preparations we should attend to.”

Vex nods. “Of course.”

She stands, dry-eyed at last, and offers a hand to help Percy up. He takes it and pulls himself  to his feet, and once he’s standing, he doesn’t let go. “Are you ready?” he asks.

Vex looks at him. “No,” she says.

She takes one last look around the ruined shrine, the destruction she has wrought in the Raven Queen’s sacred space. “Let’s go,” she says. Hand still clasped in Percy’s, she leads him out into the cold air of Whitestone, to begin the preparations to bury her brother.

She doesn’t look back.

**Author's Note:**

> look, i don't know either


End file.
